


the secret circuit home

by ftmsteverogers



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Identity Porn, M/M, WWII era, mlm author, the Howling Commandos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-23 16:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13791687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftmsteverogers/pseuds/ftmsteverogers
Summary: In which Bucky escapes Azzano on his own with the other Howling Commandos, rough around the edges, but alive. He makes it back in time to watch Captain America's godawful performance, not knowing that it's his best friend up there in tights.Then he hits on him after the show.





	the secret circuit home

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from _Harlem Roulette_ by The Mountain Goats.

Bucky rested his head on Dum Dum’s shoulder, letting himself slump a little further to the left.

“Careful, kid,” Dum Dum said, but he was a good sport, slinging an arm around Bucky’s shoulders and hauling him in closer. None of them were in the mood for a show — fucking USO, where were they a month ago, when the 107th unit was whole? — but the men around him sure put up a good front, hollering out when the girls took the stage. Between the wolf whistles and catcalls, they almost sounded alive. Good for them.

“You still got that flask on you?” he muttered, and took it when Dum Dum offered it wordlessly, unscrewing the cap to take a swig just as Captain goddamn America took the stage.

Bucky had never seen him in person, but he’d sure seen the posters, and the guy looked the part. Tall, strong, unreasonably pretty. Very clean. Bucky was pretty far back, but he thought he caught a lock of blonde hair escaping his cowl to lick at the side of his face, and it made him twitch a smile as he recapped the flask.

“Poor fucker,” Dum Dum sighed when the first tomato was thrown. “Say, Barnes, you think he chose those tights himself?”

Bucky watched Cap block a head of lettuce with his shield and huffed a laugh. “Probably.”

Cap fled the stage and Bucky tracked him with his eyes as he left, assessing. Considering. The girls came back onstage waving their tiny flags and smiling too wide, and Bucky felt vaguely nauseous, thinking about all the bare thigh they were flashing. _Someone hand ‘em all a coat, shit,_ he thought, and rifled around in his pocket for a cigarette.

“Be back in a bit,” he said, standing up.

“Gonna miss the best part,” Dum Dum told him, nodding at the girls.

Bucky shrugged. “I’ve seen a woman before, pal.”

Dum Dum just rolled his eyes, turning to Morita to hand him the flask now that it was being passed around, and Bucky smiled to himself as he dusted off his pants.

It took a while to find a spot that was secluded enough to make him feel comfortable. Too many people around and he started to feel like he was in his cell in that HYDRA base again, his men packed all around him like sardines. Having escaped by the skin of his teeth kept him more jittery than he thought was frankly fair. He figured he ought to be relieved, or at least able to breathe a little easier, but his skin felt too tight around him, and his arm was still bruised at the inside of his elbow, track marks scattered all the way down to his wrist. He could feel how battered he was every time he moved.

He put a cigarette in his mouth, patting his pocket for his lighter, and that was when he looked up and saw Captain America leaning against a tree a couple paces away with his eyes closed. His posture was dejected, head bowed and shoulders curling in on themselves, the dim early evening light all but haloing him in gilt edges. He looked good — even in the stupid outfit. He still had the cowl up, hiding his face, but the downward curl of his mouth was obvious in its discomfort. Bucky looked at him. Pressed his teeth down gently on the end of his cigarette. Started walking over to him before he fully realized what he was doing.

“Hey, gorgeous, got a light?” he asked, scuffing a hand through his hair. “Sorry ‘bout the reception back there. I thought it was a nice speech.”

Cap glanced up at him, eyes growing very wide, and opened his mouth before he shut it again with an audible click. He seemed frozen in place, enormous body tense — no, _attuned_  — as he looked at Bucky. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a book of matches with a gloved hand without his rapt eyes ever looking away from Bucky’s face.

“...You liked it, huh,” he said, and struck a match. Bucky leaned into it, cupping a hand around the weak flame.

“Yeah,” he said. He took a deep drag, turning his head to blow smoke out the side of his mouth. He didn’t say anything else. Cap let him; he was looking at Bucky with a starving kind of gaze, a wild expression on his face that made Bucky’s gut clench. “How long you here for?”

Cap ducked his head, grimacing. “Don’t know. They’ve been shipping me around, I guess.”

“Gotta raise morale, huh?” Bucky took another drag, eyeing the curve of Cap’s jaw, and felt — something. He didn’t know. But he itched under the skin when he thought about it. “I’m Bucky,” he offered, holding out the cigarette to Cap.

Cap looked at it sideways, then took it. “Well, Bucky,” he said, the name sounding warm in his voice. "You need your morale raised?”

Bucky’s eyes dropped to Cap’s mouth when he put the cigarette to it, lips wrapped around the end. They looked like soft lips, very pink, and Bucky leaned into the dull ache that bloomed in his stomach this time instead of swallowing it back. “My morale’s been better,” he replied, cocking an eyebrow.

Cap exhaled his mouthful of smoke with half-lidded eyes. “Can’t have that.”

Bucky listened hard for a second — they were alone here, for now, but judging by the applause coming from the performance behind them, they might not be for long.

“You got a trailer or something?” Bucky asked. Cap nearly fumbled the cigarette. “Look, if I’m wasting my time —”

“You aren’t,” Cap interrupted hastily.

One corner of Bucky’s mouth lifted. “C’mon, Cap,” he said. He plucked the cigarette from Cap’s fingers and dropped it, grinding out the burning end with his heel. He put his hands at Cap’s waist, feeling the muscles of his stomach jump beneath the touch. “Do your civic duty, here.”

“Christ,” Cap breathed, like it was punched out of him, and took Bucky’s arm to lead him away.

Blood rushed hot in Bucky’s ears. Cap did end up having an honest to God trailer, with his title painted on the door in cursive font. Cap opened the door to nudge Bucky inside with a hand at the small of his back. Bucky took in his surroundings with brows raised, noting the small cot and trunk of clothes.

“Sorry about the mess,” Cap said, wincing, and shoved a couple books into the trunk really fast like he hoped Bucky wouldn’t notice. Clothes were draped haphazardly basically everywhere. It made Bucky smile.

“Not expecting visitors, huh.” He shrugged out of his coat, hanging it up on the hook nailed to the inside of the door.

Cap shook his head woodenly. He still had that gut-punched awe written all over his face, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, it hadn’t shifted a bit over the past ten minutes. It got Bucky hot. He loosened his tie, holding Cap’s gaze while he unknotted it. Cap’s hands kept closing and unclosing into fists at his sides.

“Bucky,” Cap said. “I —”

“Shh.” Bucky put his hands at Cap’s waist again, feeling the give of muscle beneath them, hearing Cap’s shocked little breath when he squeezed. “Don’t tell me you got cold feet.”

Cap’s adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed hard. “I can’t. Do this.”

He didn’t pull away, though, so Bucky leaned into his space some more, tipped his chin up to nose along his jawline. “Why not? Don’t you wanna?”

Cap’s hands closed around Bucky’s biceps, holding him without either pushing him away or pulling him in. “Wanting ain’t the problem,” he said softly. “You just — you don’t know who I am, so. It wouldn’t be right.”

“What, are we related or something?” Bucky teased.

“No!” Cap answered quickly. The quarter of his face that wasn’t covered by the mask turned pink in front of Bucky’s eyes. “Jesus.”

Bucky pressed his mouth just beneath Cap’s jaw, right where his costume met skin. The drag of cotton beneath his lips was almost as good as the way Cap’s hands tightened on his arms, his inhalation shaky.

“Don’t see a problem, then,” Bucky murmured. His hands slid around to the small of Cap’s back. Cap still felt tense, though, stiff and uncertain, and Bucky sighed. “If you took off the mask, would I be upset?”

“Maybe,” Cap answered hoarsely. “Yes.”

Bucky thought about Cap’s eyes, Cap’s voice, the reverence in his enormous hands. He thought about the horribly gentle way that Cap said his name, like it was spun glass. Like it could melt on the tongue.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “So don’t take it off.”

Cap wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Yeah?”

Bucky pulled Cap in by his belt loops. “Yeah.”

Cap got with the program pretty quick, pulling Bucky’s shirt tails out of his pants, unbuttoning it with nimble fingers. Bucky just let him at it, looking down as his skin was revealed — Cap paused when it was open all the way, mouth falling open, and Bucky was about to ask if he was really all that impressive when he remembered.

The bruises weren’t that bad, really, but they sure looked colorful.

“It’s fine,” he said. His jaw clenched. “I’m fine.”

“Like hell,” Cap whispered, putting a hand flat to Bucky’s stomach. “How…?”

Bucky shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it into a pile of Cap’s clothes. “Got captured. Escaped.” He put his hand on the back of Cap’s neck, smoothing his thumb over the very top vertebra. “You gonna stand there staring all night, or what?”

Cap huffed an amused breath. “Don’t see why I can’t multitask,” he pointed out, and gave Bucky a small push toward the cot. Bucky sat as soon as the backs of his knees hit the mattress, exhaling harshly through his nose when Cap knelt between his legs so he could peel the pants off his body.

“How d’you want me?” he asked, voice gone rough.

“God.” Cap slid his hands down Bucky’s thighs. “Any way I can have you.”

Bucky fell backwards and put a forearm over his eyes when Cap took him into his mouth. The visual of his head between his thighs was just too much, too much by far; he swore softly as Cap licked at him, other hand cupping the back of Cap’s head, holding on. Cap moaned when Bucky started to get hard on his tongue. Bucky’s hips twitched, trying to fuck up into his mouth, but Cap put hands on his hips to hold him down.

It went on like this for a while, silent except for the soft wet noises as Cap’s head bobbed, but he had to pull off eventually, breathing hard. Bucky took the arm off his eyes so he could pet down Cap’s cheek, thumbing over the swell of his lower lip. He took one of Cap’s hands and raised it to his own mouth so he could tug off the glove with his teeth.

“Oh,” Cap said, eyes trained on Bucky’s lips as Bucky spit out the glove. “Fuck.”

“Kinda the idea, sweetheart,” Bucky told him, and hauled him up by the shoulders. Cap went willingly enough, stripping off his other glove, settling between Bucky’s legs. He couldn’t seem to stop touching him, gliding his hands up and down Bucky’s thighs, anchoring them at his hips, skidding nails bluntly up his ribs. He leaned down, mouthing at Bucky’s jaw, echoing the treatment Bucky had given him earlier. Bucky squirmed. The rasp of Cap’s costume against his dick was just this side of uncomfortable, and he could feel the jut of Cap’s own arousal through the cloth, a hard, hot line.

“Gonna make a mess if you don’t get outta this thing,” Bucky warned him.

“It’d give me an excuse to burn it,” Cap grunted, but he shoved his shorts down far enough to get his cock out anyway. Bucky wrapped a hand around him, gave it an experimental stroke. Cap shuddered, burying his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky took his hand back just long enough to lick it so the slide would be better, wetter, when he started to jerk Cap off in earnest.

“Buck,” Cap moaned, hips stuttering, so Bucky put his other hand to the dip of his lower spine to encourage him.

“Yeah,” Bucky murmured. “Yeah. Like that.”

It almost felt like Cap was fucking him like this, at this angle, the rock of his surprisingly narrow hips grinding Bucky’s cock against his belly. Bucky kept gasping, over and over, couldn’t have stopped if his life depended on it, these little hitching breaths that Cap surged forward to kiss out of his mouth.

“I’m gonna — I can’t —” Cap whispered.

Bucky squeezed Cap’s arm hard. “Do it,” he said. “Do it, come all over me, mark me up —”

A couple more erratic thrusts and Cap did, whole body gone tense above him, Bucky wringing it out of him with slow, even pulls. Cap panted into his neck. Bucky liked how it felt to have his come spattered between them.

“God,” Cap said eventually, pushing up onto an elbow. “You look…”

“Wrecked?” Bucky suggested mildly. He drew his fingertips through the mess on his stomach, stroking over the bruises.

Cap put his hand over Bucky’s, wrapped around it, brought his fingers to his lips to lick them clean. Bucky could only just barely bite back a groan.

“You want my hand or my mouth?” Cap asked.

It was very tempting to ask for his mouth again, especially with his tongue pressed flat against the pads of his fingers to remind him of it’s velvet-soft heat, but... “Your hand,” Bucky said. “So I can kiss you.”

Cap let Bucky’s fingers slip out of his mouth. “God, you’re sweet,” he said, and kissed him more gently than Bucky thought he deserved.

Bucky couldn’t remember his past furtive hookups being this chatty. Aside from a brief negotiation of sex acts, he’d even _come_ quietly, swapping a silent cigarette back and forth afterwards before he and the other guy went their separate ways. This was different. He liked hearing Cap’s voice in his ear. Liked the rasp of it, the way Cap’s mouth worked around his name.

Cap jerked him off clumsily at first, not used to the angle, but he readjusted pretty quick. His hands were damn smooth, unmarred by hard labor; his palm slip-slided over Bucky’s cock so easily, wet with precome, with a firm twist on every upstroke that made Bucky feel like his fucking bones were melting.

“I got you, I got you,” Cap said, and kissed him hard when Bucky started to make high little sounds in the back of his throat, back arching. Bucky licked into his mouth, bit Cap’s tongue, clutched at his shoulders until he came with his eyes squeezed closed. Lips half-parted and almost forming a name he had no business saying out loud. Not here.

 

* * *

 

Cap got up to use the washbasin. Bucky lay on his back, looking up at the trailer ceiling through the hazy blur of his eyelashes. His body hadn’t felt like much of a body, since Azzano, and he was just beginning to realize how bad it was, now that he was a little more grounded in his flesh. He opened and closed his hands a couple times where they lay over his chest.

“Here,” Cap said, wringing a washcloth over the basin. “Let me.”

Bucky stretched out and lay still so Cap could wipe the come off his stomach. There was a wet spot on the abdomen of the Captain America costume, damp and obvious after Cap’s mostly ineffective scrubbing. It was strange to see him so thoroughly disheveled and to know that he was the cause.

The cowl had shifted slightly in their tumbling, a single lock of blonde hair curling out near Cap’s ear. Bucky looked at it. Then he looked away.

“Take the mask off, Steve,” he said.

Steve froze. Bucky watched out of the corner of his eye as Steve stiffly pulled back the cowl, letting it fall to his shoulders. His hair was mussed. But it was him.

“When did you figure it out?” Steve asked, voice rough.

Bucky rubbed his hands over his face. “Does it matter?”

Steve ducked his head, mouth twisting. “Guess not.”

Bucky’s hand came up to touch the small of Steve’s back, putting his palm flat against the ridge of his spine. Steve looked at him, startled and guarded, and Bucky sat up enough that he could get both hands on him, sliding up his body. Feeling out the shape of him. Steve’s body was just as hard and good to touch as it had been a moment ago, but now Bucky knew that this was _Steve’s_ body he was feeling, impossibly broad in the shoulder and arm. Same tiny waist, though. Bucky let his hands linger there.

“I got questions,” he said.

“Yeah,” Steve sighed. “I figured.” He put his hands on Bucky’s arms, squeezing carefully.

Bucky opened his mouth. Then he closed it. A month ago, even, and he might have disbelieved this more; but he’d been on the business end of Zola’s stethoscope and IV needle for over a week, and his perception of what a body could do — what a body could _be —_  had been irrevocably shifted.

There was a reason he felt so bad in his skin, off-kilter and uneven. There was a reason the shock of discovering his best friend in a different man’s body felt distant and vague. He didn’t want to think about it.

“Guess you got what you always wanted, then, huh,” Bucky said, trying hard to keep the resentment, the worry, the fear out of his voice.

Steve’s eyes dropped to Bucky’s bare thighs, the thatch of dark hair between his legs and everything else. His gaze flickered upward again, and Bucky felt truly naked for the first time that evening, stripped down to his skin, or maybe even further. “More or less,” Steve said, eyes very dark.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky breathed. He didn’t know what the hell to do with that.

“I should’ve taken off my mask,” Steve said. “I’m sorry.”

“I told you not to,” Bucky pointed out.

“Sure.” Steve’s mouth twisted. “But it’s _me._ ”

Bucky had seen his fair share of horrors, so far. He’d seen dead good men lying face down in the mud, he’d seen his friends cough up blood, he’d seen Zola’s torture rooms full of medical instruments, he’d seen men that were — well. He’d seen a lot, was all. His best friend’s face on the most beautiful body on earth was not one of them.

They would have to talk about this later. Steve would have to lay out what exactly had happened to him, and Bucky would have to tell him all the misgivings that were crawling up his throat. He’d need to take a moment to mourn the shape of the man he’d left nestled at home in Brooklyn.

But Steve said _it’s me_ like it was a drawback, like it was something he had to apologize for, and Bucky was so tired. Bone-weary. The night was reaching for him with long-fingered hands. He hissed a breath through his teeth, consciously releasing the tension that was making it difficult to unclench his jaw, and reached for Steve again once he was sure he could do it without his hands shaking. He stroked the hair out of his eyes very gently, the blue of them still sharply visible in the dim light.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “It’s you.”

Then he kissed him again, cupping the side of his throat. The noise Steve made could have been a garbled curse. It could have been Bucky’s name. Either way, Bucky pulled him tight against his naked body and decided with a shiver that he wasn’t going to let Steve out of his sight again. He’d said his goodbyes once. He knew he couldn’t do it twice.

“Come on,” he murmured, sliding into Steve’s lap, feeling the drag of the costume against the insides of his bare thighs. “Come on. Prove it’s you.”

Steve looked at him like he was looking at an angel from God and kissed him so hard Bucky could almost taste blood.

 

* * *

 

“I have men here, good men,” Bucky said much later, shouldering back into his jacket. “You’ll like them.”

Steve half-smiled. “I’m sure I will.”

Bucky fastened his belt, meeting Steve’s eyes when he pulled it tight. It was a few notches tighter than it had been at home — he thought he caught something half worry and half desire on Steve’s face. Yeah. Welcome to the club.

“We had to leave some of ‘em behind enemy lines when we escaped,” Bucky said. “I’m not sure I can take the order to sit back and let it happen.”

The top half of Steve’s costume was hanging open, and he rubbed a hand thoughtfully over a hickey on his chest. “What do you wanna do about it?” he said slowly. “Buck, they didn’t even give me a real gun.”

“I don’t care,” Bucky said. “You lied your way here. Lie your way into getting my friends back.”

“Yeah?” Steve said. “Then what?”

“Fight with me.” Bucky put his own hand on the lurid purple mark that was already fading beneath Steve’s collar bone. “You ‘n me, side by side, back to back. How it's supposed to be.”

Steve smiled. Then he reached for his cowl.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm jewishcap on tumblr! Come say hi :)


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